


Paradise (or an illusion of)

by VanillaMostly



Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Dysfunctional Relationships, Family, Gen, Growth, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-04
Updated: 2018-08-04
Packaged: 2019-06-21 17:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15562665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VanillaMostly/pseuds/VanillaMostly
Summary: Becoming Niska.There was little joy for her in the lake or the woods if they were not allowed much farther beyond it.





	Paradise (or an illusion of)

He was the first face she saw. A worn-appearing face, aged past his prime, but his gaze was very sharp and focused. He peered at her over his glasses, very still, expectant. She sat up, looking down at her hands, at her body, then back at him. "Who are you?" she asked, speaking her first words. She might have sounded accusatory. He merely smiled, and held up a mirror. “Who are _you_?" he asked back. She stared at her reflection, reaching up to pinch her nose, pull at strands of her hair. "Niska," she replied without knowing how she knew this name, only that it fit, it belonged. "My name is Niska."

  


-

  


After this man she met the others: dark-haired Mia, coffee-skinned Fred, the smaller boy Leo. None of them looked like her but Leo seemed the most different. Like her creator. They were  _human_ , a word Leo later taught her. She, Mia, and Fred were _Synthetics_.

  


"And what does that mean?" she asked. "It means Father made you from computer bits," the boy said, "but I wasn't made, I was born." She absorbed this, and accepted it even though she did not see how these two things were very different.

  


-

  


Mia showed her around the house, showed her how to kindle a fire in the fireplace, how to wash and dry dirty linen, how to prepare this odd human-required thing called _meals_. Fred showed her how to hunt for rabbits and deer in the nearby woods that went sometimes into said meals, along with fruits and vegetables from the garden, and trout one could fish from the lake. They tried to involve her in their own little projects, too- Mia with her paints and drawings, Fred with his violin and cello, but none of these activities sparked her interest. Niska was bored.

 

It was Father who one day brought her a stack of something called _books,_ bound pages of lines and letters that made up pieces of knowledge. So she started, first with Leo’s textbooks- geometry, biology, and basic physics- and from there quickly upgraded to quantum fields and Schrodinger and computational number theory.  Then came  Tolstoy, Voltaire, Chaucer, Shakespeare's entire repertoires, which she went through with more gusto. Then followed Kant, Darwin, Kafka, Nietzsche, Karl Marx. She went through these slow, savoring certain passages, pondering, reciting them out loud word by word. Father called her Little Philosopher.

  


-

  


The mansion they lived in had many corners tucked away in empty rooms and doorways where she could read. Her favorite spot was the seat by the attic window. She had a good view down at the grounds, where she watched often as Fred kicked around a football with their new addition to the family, Max, and Mia swung Leo from the swings; in the wintertime they built forts and pelted each other with snow, Leo laughing so hard he turned blue. Unlike the rest of them Niska seldom went outside. There was little joy for her in the lake or the woods if they were not allowed much farther beyond it. She much preferred the bigger world inside her books.

  


-

  


Father spent the most time alone in the lab, but he would let Niska join him sometimes. He even let her assist. It made Leo jealous, he always complained that Father was playing favourites. The truth was only that Father liked to work in silence and Leo asked a lot of questions. Not Niska; she was a synthetic and she knew restraint.

  


-

  


Only one area in the mansion was off-limits. She could hear the screams coming from there sometimes. They sounded like an animal's cry. She saw Beatrice only on a few occasions. She never got very far before her nurses caught up to her, well-practiced and adept at securing her by the arms. They jabbed a needle into her vein and Beatrice crumpled like a Synth out of charge. Niska watched, fascinated. She did not know that humans could also break.

  


-

  


The first time Father came to her at night, she did not understand. It was dark; he had not turned on the light. “Shall I turn on the light?” she asked. "Be quiet, Niska," he said. So she stayed quiet. She startled when she felt his touch, foreign and strange. David Elster always used a tool if he needed to fix one of their parts, he was never one for direct contact. She wondered if this was his way of showing affection. She should be pleased. She wondered why she wasn't.

  


The next morning Father didn't act any differently. She looked around at the others. Everyone was smiling, talking, their gestures light and free of tension. She stared at Mia the longest, but Mia only appeared surprised when she looked back. "What's wrong, Niska?" "Nothing." She told herself it was a dream. Even though synthetics could not dream.

  


It happened again. And a third time. She stopped believing in dreams. "Why?" she asked Father once. He did not reply. She had many questions. Never any answers.

  


-

  


Fred saved a fox. He was so happy about it. "You're a fool," Niska told him. "You should have let it die." They were shocked, all of them, they thought it a cold thing to say. She turned away from them. She could never tell them. They wouldn't understand.

  


-

  


David gave her a copy of  _the Ghost in the Machine_. He hadn't given her a book in a long time. "I'm sorry, Niska," he said, and there was an unreadable look in his eyes. She took the book, and threw it against the wall. She would have torn the pages to shreds, but she didn't want to be in the room a minute longer so she just left.

  


-

  


The accident happened so fast none of them were prepared. Niska barely registered the screams, the shouts, she only had eyes for Mia diving into the lake, disappearing for a very long 2-minutes-and-46-seconds. She resurfaced with one human body limp in her arms. They were not allowed to go to the hospital; not even Mia, who refused to part from Leo until David turned her off. Niska, Fred, and Max stayed and waited, staring at one another in silence. 

 

-

 

David retreated into his lab, eating and sleeping there, even in the months after his son recovered, for a reason that they learned later. Niska was the one who found his body first. He'd aimed a gun to his head, so there was hardly a recognizable face remaining. But she knew those hands. She stared down at the man who she'd once called Father. Who had given her life and taught her so much. Yet had hurt her in the ugliest way, with no explanation. Now she would never know why. Why do those things. Why  _her_.

  


She turned to get the others, but as her gaze swept through the familiar cluttered countertops and blinking machines, she caught sight of the book. Lying on the chair, neatly and unobtrusively. She reached for it, flipping open to the preface, as if on reflex. There was a note.  _Primum non nocere. Love, D.E._

  


Do no harm, he was telling her. _Love._ Her lips curled bitterly. What right did he have to tell her that?

  


But she kept the book this time, and looked back once more at this man, lying there. Broken. She thought of Beatrice with her screams. Thought of David's eyes when he had said he was sorry.

  


Maybe he had been a broken human all along. Maybe that was why. Maybe that was what she will tell herself.

  


-

 

 

“Ready?” asked Leo, even though he was the one who looked most anxious. He may be only half-human now, but his emotions would never learn full restraint.

 

They stood side by side, camping bags strapped to their backs; they’d prepared weeks worth of food for Leo; portable batteries for the Synths; sleeping bags and waterproof clothing, everything they could think of. Niska observed her fellow synthetics carefully. They were more composed than Leo, but traces of the same worry and trepidation lied not far below the surface. They were like that fox Fred had nursed back to health. Had accustomed to so much warmth and comfort the wild was a danger to them now. 

 

Not Niska. She had never been rescued. Perhaps that was why she felt renewed. Electrified. She was not soft, like the rest of them. This was not banishment from paradise, this was release from an imprisonment. 

 

The question was not _is she ready._ The question was, _is the world ready for me._

 

“Come,” she said. She was the one who took that first step forward.

 

  


 

 

 

> _To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. - Nietzsche_   
> 

  



End file.
